Antonio’s Italian Bistro offers life-changing Italian food

Stephenville has a new Italian Restaurant in town. Antonio’s Italian Bistro opened up last week at 1044 Washington St. Having read great reviews about the also recently opened Antonio’s location in Granbury, I was anxious to see and taste it for myself.

The only other Italian restaurant in town, Pastafina, is well established and has been around since the late 1990’s. However, my personal opinion of the food at Pastafina has been on a steady decline. Back in my days as a member of the yearbook staff in high school, we used to pick up delicious orders of lasagna from Pastafina while we worked through lunch. These days, I don’t even bother going. The service there was always sub-par, but now the food there isn’t any better.

For that reason, as I drove to Antonio’s, I had a reserved hopefulness for a place to get decent Italian food without having to wait until visiting another town. I certainly wasn’t expecting a five-star gourmet experience, just some reasonable quality.

 Antonio’s opened without a lot of fanfare, and was fairly slow when my date and I arrived. Granted, we were eating there during an off-peak time, so I’m uncertain what kind of traffic Antonio’s had experienced thus far. We were immediately met with smiling faces from two girls at the greeting station, of whom one showed us to our seat. It was still fairly recognizable on the inside from the sub-par Mexican restaurant that had dwelt there previously, but there was some nice remodeling work done, and it had a very pleasant atmosphere. We sat at a table in the bar area, and was immediately greeted by our very friendly server, who took our drink orders.

Wanting to get as much of a scope as possible of the food from one visit, we both ordered appetizers. I ordered the Mozzarella alla Caprese, which was roma tomatoes, basil, and thick slices of fresh buffalo mozzarella, drizzled with extra virgin olive oil. Buffalo mozzarella is like a really thick mozzarella that you can cut into with a fork. I took a piece of that, a bit of a roma tomato and a piece of basil all together at one bite.  The euphoric combination of these flavors is almost indescribable; one has to experience it for themselves. The mozzarella was soft and comforting, the roma tomatoes popped with flavor, and the basil rounded out the pallet with its herbal characteristics. The presentation of the appetizer was also very pretty.

Complimentary bread and butter are offered.  The bread is similar but is softer and more flavorful than Pastafina’s, and the butter has a touch of garlic and parsley flakes mixed in. My date is a big fan of garlic and there wasn’t enough garlic in the butter to satisfy, so she ordered the garlic bread off of the appetizer menu. What she got was plentiful halves of bread with ample amounts of butter and garlic on top – a garlic lover’s dream. It was delicious, however the only complaint of the evening was that it was actually too much garlic.  There were actually large chunks of garlic cloves on the bread, which gave too much of a kick. We picked off the largest pieces of garlic before continuing to eat the bread.

My entrée for the evening was ordered off the list of their specialties, the Pollo ai Carciofi, which is chicken breast with artichoke hearts, mushrooms, and basil in a white wine lemon sauce. The chicken was so tender and moist, the mushrooms and artichokes were bursting with flavor, which were amplified by the slight tartness of the white wine lemon sauce.

The entrée also comes with a dinner salad, and my choice of dressing was their house dressing. This is because I know it will have been freshly made there and so I wanted to see how it faired.  That stuff was so good, that if they bottled it, I would be buying it to take home. It was Chef Antonio’s take on a vinaigrette dressing, but with balsamic vinegar, which might have been a reduction (meaning cooked to make thicker), because it was also very thick for a vinaigrette. The only problem was that I loved it so much that I put too much of it on my salad, and the intensity of the flavor caught up with me.

We left the restaurant completely amazed and impressed to find such magnificent Italian food in Stephenville. If Pastafina can stay in business against this restaurant, it will only be because it’s established and many people will continue to go there out of habit. There definitely is no comparison in quality, and I hope that Antonio’s is able to maintain it.  After praising my experience to the server, he said, “we may have our first regulars.” It’s very possible that he was correct.